Argo: Towards Small Vessel Detection for Humanitarian Purposes

Refugees trying to get to Europe via the Mediterranean often face human rights violations. The present situation is not in line with the UN's SDG's 10 and 16. We present Argo: a semi-automatically created vessel classification dataset focused on small boats, with the aim to enable NGOs and the public to detect refugee boats in satellite imagery. We achieve a classification recall of 91% on small ships. With a tool developed on top of the results presented here, NGOs could collect information and hold institutions participating in illegal activities accountable.